This study examines the application of corpus linguistics in English language teaching (ELT) in Colombia, where its practical adoption remains limited compared to many developed countries. Data were gathered through a survey of English instructors at Colombian universities to assess their familiarity with corpus linguistics. Findings indicate…

Teaching within institutions that prototypically privilege the social order of language is often problematic for both genders, especially because we tend to occupy masculine lines of rhetoric. The "standards" that women adhere to are not always associated in the feminine construction, and when we question "standards," the…

INTENDED AS AN INTRODUCTORY COLLEGE LINGUISTICS TEXT, THIS BOOK PRESENTS IN AN ORDERLY, AUTONOMOUS WAY THE GENERALLY ACCEPTED FACTS AND PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTICS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE A PROFESSIONAL NEED TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT LANGUAGE. DIVIDED INTO TWELVE SECTIONS, THE BOOK DESCRIBES IN DETAIL IN A PART DEVOTED TO PHONOLOGY, (1) PHONEMES, (2)…

This paper argues that we are moving toward a more experimental approach to language, one which is characterized less by introspective judgments and more by empirical evidence. The first section of the paper is a general discussion of the directions linguistic theories are taking. The second section discusses some of the fundamental problems…

Maintains that the study of signs is divided between those scholars who use the Saussurian binary sign (semiology) and those who prefer the Peirce tripartite sign (semiotics). Concludes that neither the Saussurian nor Peircian analysis methods can produce a semiotic interpretation based on a hierarchy of the text's various components. (CFR)

A context-based framework for teaching the history of Portuguese is presented. It incorporates passages from a medieval Galician-Portuguese work to illustrate diachronic linguistic processes in the evolution of the language. Advantages of the approach, prerequisites, text, and syllabus are described, and a sample analysis is provided. (53…

The four 1997 issues include these articles: "Introduction to Government and Binding Theory," parts 4-7 (Cheryl A. Black), which discuss constraints on movement, semantic roles and case theory, binding theory, and more recent additions to the theory; "A Scholar's Ethic" (William J. Samarin), concerning the behavior of scholars…

Knowledge of linguistics, a systematic understanding of language and languages, is a necessary qualification for language teachers. In language learning, a "mini-language" is constructed before fluency is approached. Interaction in the language is needed, and the teacher, as the partner in the interaction, must be able to work within the narrower…

This study addressed two questions concerning subject-verb agreement and erroneous feature migration in French second language learners: whether multiple or single token items elicit greater errors in subject-verb agreement, and whether linear distance increases errors in agreement. Empirical research suggests that a mismatch in number between…

Suggests that the variety of English spoken in Brunei (BNE), sometimes called nonstandard, is still at an early stage of development and there is little awareness among its speakers of some differences from standard English (STE). Results of a grammaticality judgment test administered to 106 university students, designed to find nonstandard verb…

It is suggested that contrastive linguistics, the systematic comparison of two languages, be considered in the preparation of instructional materials and as a choice of teaching methods and techniques for training tranlators and interpreters. The contrastive analysis hypothesis suggests that the major source of errors committed by learners of a…

These papers deal with a variety of topics bearing on modality in a variety of languages and language families. While all languages have ways of expressing modality, that is, such notions as possibility, necessity, and contingency, this phenomenon has been the object of little systematic linguistic analysis. These papers are presented with the…

This book is a selected distillation of linguistic scholarship which describes from both a historical (diachronic) and a contemporary (synchronic) viewpoint that conglomerate set of dialects and idiolects called English. The emphasis is on contemporary American English. But foreign language examples are also given in an attempt to demonstrate the…

Effective teaching of a foreign language to people who already have a command of their mother tongue requires surveying the main elements of the second language to determine differences from the first language. Phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems and cultural differences are considered. (SW)

Contrastive analysis is suggested as a tool in language teaching for such areas as: (1) deciding how much to focus on different aspects of the target language; (2) making generalizations about its structure; and (3) explaining texts or constructions which might otherwise be incomprehensible. The claim is made that such procedures need to be based…